This week we’ve talked about generating inner feelings of acceptance, appreciation, gratitude, and trust. What if it all sounds good to you, but you’re just not feeling it? What can you do?

One of the simplest ways I know to connect with these feelings is to take an action that expresses them. For instance, if you’re judging someone harshly, express acknowledgment of something that they are saying. Acknowledgement is a first move into acceptance.

You could look them directly in the eyes and say, “What I hear you saying is _______.” You don’t have to agree with or like what the other person is saying, you are simply acknowledging that you are listening to them and accepting one specific thing that they are saying.

After that, you may feel more accepting toward them as they likely will toward you. You may feel able to take it one step farther by smiling and saying, “I really appreciate your ability to express that to me.”

Now you may be feeling even more open to that person and may feel inspired with the next step, gratitude. “Thank you so much for letting me know that.”

Your feeling may have shifted pretty dramatically at this point. It’s likely that theirs has too. You have an experience that this acceptance, appreciation, and gratitude stuff really works. A natural feeling of trust in the goodness and grace of Life may begin to well up inside of you.

As you repeat similar actions in different situations, you may begin to feel a consistent background state of Trust.

You can apply this idea to anything that you feel lacking in your life. Give what you want to receive. In the giving of what you desire, you experience “that” and bring more of it into the world.

Enjoy your practice,
Kevin

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In our last post, we explored the need to develop powers of concentration in a society which overwhelms us with demands for our attention and leaves us feeling “scattered.”

Here are four steps to practice your powers of concentration:

1. Choose a simple object to focus on such as your breathing or a candle flame and decide upon a period of time that you will focus on it. Settle your awareness on it with an attitude of relaxed attentive receptivity.

2. Recognize whenever your attention wanders to anything other than your point of focus. Make note of what your attention wandered to and accept it without self-criticism.

3. Release your wandering thought, feeling, or sensation. Instead of following your train of thought, let it go so it recedes into the background. If it’s important, you can go back to it later.

4. Return to your point of focus. Return as many times as you need to.

Practice for a few minutes daily and you’ll grow your ability to concentrate. You may also find yourself feeling more deeply relaxed, focused, and whole. You may be amazed at the positive effects in your life.

Do you ever sit down to meditate and find your mind wandering off again and again? Or maybe you find your mind stuck on one thought that keeps repeating itself over and over, like a broken record.

Does a minor conflict or a little bump in your road sometimes set off a huge feeling—like sadness, fear, or anger—that you can’t get rid of? Does that feeling linger way longer than it should, so that it colors everything you do?

Do you have recurring physical pains, emotional conflicts, or negative thoughts that are perpetual thorns in your side?

Or maybe you have a more subtle feeling that is with you when you wake up every morning. It could be self-doubt, mistrust, or anxiety that keeps you from doing what you really want to do?

Perhaps, you feel one way one moment and completely different the next, like you’re a bunch of different people wrapped up in one skin?

If so, you’re not alone. We all go through these things.
What if there was a practice that could help you with every single one of these issues?

According to three prominent meditation teachers, that practice is “mindfulness.” If you want to jump straight into my new “Healing Mindfulness Meditation,” then click here.

You’ve probably heard the word, but do you know what it really means?

Let’s begin with a definition from Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn. Kabat-Zinn is a mindfulness pioneer who has successfully used this technique in clinical settings to help people cope with stress, anxiety, pain, and illness. He is Professor of Medicine Emeritus and founding director of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

According to Kabat-Zinn:

“Mindfulness is awareness, cultivated by paying attention in a sustained and particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.” (p.1, Mindfulness for Beginners)

From this definition, we see that mindfulness has to do with a certain way of paying attention to your experience. It is about consciously holding your attention on what is happening in the present and having an attitude of unconditional acceptance.

He says: “Mindfulness is what we use to hold our minds to any object—the breath, a rock, or a banana—and awareness is the intelligence that tells us what we’re doing. . .” (P.50-51, Turning the Mind Into an Ally) Awareness is the ability to know where our attention is at any given time.

In other words, according to Mipham, mindfulness is the ability to place your attention on something and hold it there, while awareness is the ability to know where your attention is. Awareness tells you if you are “staying with” the object of your attention or wandering away from it.

Shinzen Young takes us deeper into mindfulness by describing it as a set of inner skills.

He says, “mindful awareness is defined as: three attentional skills working together: Concentration Power, Sensory Clarity, and Equanimity.” (p.7, Five Ways to Know Yourself: An Introduction to Basic Mindfulness, ebook available on www.shinzen.org)

These three skills of mindful awareness are something anyone can learn. They become tools in your self-management toolkit:

“You can think of Concentration Power as the ability to focus on what you consider to be relevant at a given time.

You can think of Sensory Clarity as the ability to keep track of what you’re actually experiencing in the moment.

You can think of Equanimity as the ability to allow sensory experience to come and go without push and pull.” (p. 7, FWTKY)

Now, can you start to see why Mindfulness is so important?

It enables you to concentrate on what is most important to you, get very clear information, and not get overwhelmed by your thoughts, feelings, sensations, and experiences.

Imagine what power that gives you!

For example, have you ever been so focused and immersed in something that time seemed to fade to the background? At this moment, you were perfectly concentrated, in the flow, and highly-effective at what you were doing.

Concentration Power enables you to “stay with” what is most important to you and let go of the rest. Through mindfulness training, you grow your concentration power, so you can enter a “flow” state, at will, any time. When you do that, you find yourself better able to stick with your best intentions and achieve what you truly desire.

If you’ve ever experienced moments of heightened sensitivity to details, when the world felt more “alive,” you’ve experienced Sensory Clarity.

Sensory clarity enables you to discover the important details in any situation, so you gain insight. You see what you need to see, right when you need to see it.

If you’ve ever suffered physical, emotional, or mental pain and had a moment when you let go of resisting it or identifying with it, so that you simply observed it and allowed it to flow through you, you had a moment of Equanimity.

In this moment, you realize that you “have” thoughts, feelings, and experiences, but these do not define you. You are a conscious presence who can choose to “inhabit” or “detach from” any thoughts, feelings, and experiences. With that realization, you become a “calm inner witness” to whatever happens. You have equanimity.

With the skill of Equanimity, you no longer feel the need to avoid or push down your negative thoughts and feelings and you aren’t strongly swayed by them either. You discover a balanced “middle position,” where you can witness whatever is happening and choose how you relate to it. The moment you do this, you find an amazing sense of ease, freedom, and joy.

If you’d like to experience this for yourself—right now—I have a short guided meditation to share with you….

Yesterday, we began exploring the mental skills we need to fulfill our deeper purpose and realize our soul’s desires. The first skill we identified was “staying focused,” being persistent in the pursuit of our goals. What differentiates those who succeed from those who don’t is that they don’t give up on what they are here to do.

The second skill is self-observation—the ability to step back and witness your own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

No matter what you want to do in this life, to do it well, you need to become aware of how you are thinking, feeling, and acting. You need to be able to see what you are doing that moves you forward and what you are doing that holds you back. This practice is elusively simple, yet challenging.

To begin, take note of what your mind tells you when you go to pursue your goals and dreams. What words float through your head? What thoughts come up when you run into obstacles? What does your mind tell you about yourself and the world? What does your mind tell you about what is real and possible? Is your mind a cheerleader or an inquisitor?

Second, how do these thoughts make you feel?

Third, what do these thoughts and feelings prompt you to do?

In tomorrow’s post, we’ll talk about what to do with what you discover—especially if you don’t like what you find. There’s one simple skill that will help you move through those things that hold you back.

Does it seem like you live in two different worlds? There’s the world “out there,” the material world of tasks, responsibilities, bills, deadlines, cold hard facts, and survival. Then, there’s the world “inside” where you experience your intentions, thoughts, feelings, relationships, dreams, and deeper purpose.

These worlds sometimes seem to have different rules which cause them to conflict. For example, the material world “out there” runs on strict schedules, written rules, and hard and fast definitions of what is real according to what can be measured and calculated.

The inner world is more fluid, difficult to define and measure, and subject to forces that are hard to get a firm handle on, such as your intent, your ever-changing thoughts and feelings, and the infinitely complex networks of relationship.

If you take your primary residence in the material world, you may dismiss the inner world as less real and less valuable than what you can clearly define and measure out there in the “real world.” If you make that move, you may find yourself cut off from what gives you a deeper sense of connection, peace, love, inspiration, and value. Also in a materialist view, there is a fixed quantity of resources which naturally leads to competition to gather as much as we can for ourselves. The material world lends itself to a “me-centered,” consumer approach to life and the fears and anxieties that come with that.

If you take your primary residence in your inner world, you may find that, initially, it feels messy in there. You may find yourself bewildered by the endless chains of conflicting thoughts and feelings. However, if you allow these to pass by, if you settle into silence, if you go deeper underneath it all, you may discover an abiding peace, abundance, and harmony.

In your inner world, you can experience something just by imagining it. You can dream something and bring it to life. You can love someone or forgive someone and witness how that changes your whole experience—and theirs. Your may find a deeper sense of value not in what you gain for yourself but in what you contribute to the Whole. You may discover that you see everything and everyone as expressions of One Life.

Maybe the answer to stress is not so much in micromanaging the details of the material world, but in getting underneath it all to a more primary experience in which everything is connected. If you live in the material world while “coming from” this deeper place of inner peace, appreciation, and love, the outer world changes before you.

The outside is then seen to reflect the inside. There is no longer a division between worlds but an expression of one in the other. You live in the material world but you see it as an effect of a more essential realm.

In the next three days, we’ll talk about three specific actions you can take to bridge the two worlds and experience the infusion of matter with its deeper spiritual essence.

As the great teachers always tell us “you are a spiritual being having a human experience.”

Kevin

Kevin Schoeninger

P.S. This week on Spiritual Growth Monthly we’re practicing a powerful meditation to connect with our Loving Essence and bring that experience into life